20.9.17

The Queering Paradigms network is dedicated to examining the current
state and future challenges of queer studies from a broad
trans-disciplinary and polythetic perspective, and by interrogating
numerous social, political, cultural and academic agendas.

With our conference ‘Fucking Solidarity’, we ask for the
possibilities, gains and limits of (our) queer solidarity. We want to
‘fuck’ with the idea, the theories, the practices and the art of
solidarity, from different angles, different spaces, from and with
different groups. Investigating into the erotics of queer solidarity,
their drives, and desires behind it we reflect on hegemonies and the
possibility for anti-hierarchical or empowerment. We are interested in
the possibilities of queering existing concepts and practices of
solidarity, especially those solidarity approaches towards the
post-soviet/post-socialist and postcolonial spaces and their respective
inhabitants.

Fucking Solidarity is interested in constructive criticism. We hope
to learn about new approaches and ways of solidarity, from
queer-feminist, anti-racist, anti-hierarchical, horizontal, inclusive, “check-your-privilege”, decolonizing perspectives.

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On the occasion of Queering Paradigms IIX, This Is Now from the Equalityproject will be shown by Roberta Orlando.

28.7.17

This Is Now by Roberta Orlando is a collection of media reactions across Europe,
highlighting the current situation of the LGBTQI people living in
Chechnya, Russia. As on-going selection of published articles and
materials, This Is Now aims to keep the attention on what is happening
in the Russian region. Without forgetting how LGBTQI individuals and
groups have been punished in the past, and how they are still persecuted
today in more than 70 countries around the world.

Words Bare is an LGBTQ print exhibition which showcases research-gathered comments
and experiences the community still face in society today. The posters put LGBTQ
social challenges into the limelight, and questions why

The American University of Paris with Pantheon Sorbonne University, Institute ACTE (Arts Créations Théories Esthétiques), CNRS (French National Center of Scientific Research), France

Image by The Arts in Society

About

Founded in 2000, theArts in Society Research Network
offers an interdisciplinary forum for discussion of the role of the arts
in society. It is a place for critical engagement, examination and
experimentation, developing ideas that connect the arts to their
contexts in the world – on stage, in studios and theaters, in
classrooms, in museums and galleries,

on the streets and in communities.

Gestures That Matter

Making a gesture involves confronting the unknowable. A
gesture is not simply mechanical like a movement, nor is it fully semantic as a
sign might be, nor fundamentally intentional like an action must be. The idea
of a “gesture” escapes the classical categories of meaning and is never
developed as an independent notion. A trait that often characterizes gesture is
its ability to use the body as a means to draw evanescent traces. Because a gesture
inadvertently creates relation,

a “milieu” institutes itself within the
interstices of being and metamorphoses our quotidian lives. The gesture is
often a tool towards the transformation of the self and of the world. André Leroi-Gourhan
writes that “the tool is only real in

the gesture which renders it operative
and only exists within a cycle of operativity.”

Intrinsically inter-corporeal and inter-subjective, the gesture
is a “means without end,” in the words of Giorgio Agamben. The gesture
is always a form of the intermedial. But when the gesture apprehends its
mediality in an honest and noble manner, it becomes an artwork. That is
when a gesture “matters.” Whether it emerges in a ritualistic, artistic
or technical context, the gesture extends and transmits itself well
beyond the duration of its concrete manifestation for both the doer (the
actor) or the one doing the observing (the spectator). It is right
there that the body draws a simple gesture and aims to show the most
rudimentary form, but also the most essential, of that which we call
“art.” The gesture shows a clear materiality insofar as it does not
disappear as it seems, and it leaves permanent changes in the art world
and in within society. That is when gestures “matter,” insofar as they
both are important for giving a deep meaning to our lives and inscribe
durable transformation in the flux of everyday event. Gestures matter
because they are ethically, politically and aesthetically important.
Gestures matter because they do not evaporate but shape our lives on the
long term.

Barbara Formis

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The Equality project by Roberta Orlando will take part in the Twelfth International Conference on the Arts in Society,

The Mobius Artists Group is pleased to announce Concrete Actions,
an evening of site-inspired original works responding to the striking
concrete modernist design of City Hall and the democratic ideals that
continue to animate it. Commissioned by The Mayor’s Office of Arts and
Culture, City of Boston as part of the HEROIC ENCOUNTERS Series, Concrete Actions will
unfold on Thursday, May 25th at Boston City Hall, from 5-9 p.m.
Thirteen Mobius artists will activate the interior of the building
through a diversity of media. The civic landmark will be transformed
through aesthetic experimentation in interactive performance art, video,
installation, sound and movement.

Recent
shifts in our current national political landscape and challenges to
core values of inclusion have revived civic engagement in local
democratic processes and institutions. It is therefore an appropriate
moment to celebrate the architectural legacy of Boston City Hall, opened
in 1969. The building’s innovative design reflected the architects’
ethical commitment to active public involvement and access to city
government, as Mark Pasnik, Chris Grimley, and Michael Kubo emphasize in
their book Heroic: Concrete Architecture and the New Boston that inspired the HEROIC ENCOUNTERS Series. Against this background, the Mobius Artist Group is honored to create Concrete Actions as part of the series.

As a collective event, Concrete Actions
aptly marks the Mobius Artists Group return to Boston after a
productive 5 years in Cambridge. Now in our 40th year as an artist-run
organization, our legacy of accessibility, affordability and
collaboratively generated experimental work in all media across artistic
communities parallels the strong public commitments that inspired the
design of Boston City Hall and continue to revitalize it.

El Putnam presents Digital Bru(i)t, a
video that interplays visual and aural confusion in an attempt to
convey the complexities and challenges of maneuvering human engagement
with politics through digital technology. The work incorporates
excerpts from The Social Contract, by Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1762).

Jane Wang presents two works, Signs of Our Times III, a video slideshow of imagery from 95 artists and 21 composers reflecting the connecting theme of signage, and Concret concret, a duo of free-standing abstract wire sculptures, one of which she will knit live, in the main lobby of Boston City Hall.

Milan Kohout presents Spaces for Socialism,
an interactive performance that engages audience members in
conversation about their experience of architecture, interactive sharing
of the human condition, and perspectives on how to create democratic
socialist alternatives to modern life.

James Ellis Coleman presents Always Room for You,
a visual art work exploring the scope and inclusion of the life
histories of individuals as recorded in government documents stored in
government repositories.

Joanne RiceandTom Plsek present 42.3604° N, 71.0580° W,
a sound/performance which explores the various sonic possibilities
offered by the interiors spaces of several levels of Boston City Hall.

Sandrine Schaefer presents ESCALATE/DE-ESCALATE,
a durational performance art piece sited on the escalators between the
lobby and lower levels of Boston City Hall that explores notions of
agreement and challenges ways time is experienced and perceived between
bodies sharing space.

Daniel S. DeLuca presents Public Satellites: Telstar 20 BCH,
an experimental communications platform designed to engage the public
around City Hall. Through the use of semiotic lures PST20BCH will
capture and relay human transmissions from the public in real time.

Jesse Kaminsky presents Aposematism,
an inflatable sculpture work made of brightly colored, printed and sewn
tyvek material that will enhance the ground space with an anemone-like
shape.

Margaret Bellafiore, Mari Novotny-Jones, andAnna Wexler present MILK & LICENSES,
a performance and installation work using three defunct services
windows in Boston City Hall. The piece explores concepts of sanctuary in
our present moment by transforming the windows' original function.

Sara June presents Solid Formation,
a durational movement and installation work that experiment with the
notion of protection and architecture through the intersection of three
elements: building, boundary, and human body.